"Celtic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plebeian origin; the present age is highly aristocratic, and I am convinced that the public will read my pages with more zest from being told that I am a gentillatre by birth with Cornish blood {1b} in my veins, of a family who lived on their own property at a place bearing a Celtic name, signifying the house on the hill, or more strictly the house on ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... think that your idea of a statue to Washington to be erected by public subscription in London is an admirable one. The future of the world belongs to the Anglo-Celtic races if they can but work in unison, and everything which works for that end makes for the highest. I believe that the great stream which bifurcated a century ago may have re-united before many more centuries have passed, and that we shall all have learned by then that patriotism is not ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... twig bent double and with the two ends tied together, so as to keep the stone head in its place. The hammers of a later period of the "stone age" are shaped more like the iron ones our smiths use at the present day, and they have a hole bored in the middle for the handle. In Brittany, where Celtic remains are found in such abundance, it is not uncommon to see stone hammers of the latter kind hanging up in the cottages of the peasants, who use them to drive in nails with. They have an odd way of providing them with handles, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Celtic intelligence for a meaning behind an illogical tongue. He drew up, observing. "Two minutes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which often carries with it a heavily-shaded lip, and which with pure outlines and outspoken reliefs gives us some of our handsomest women,—the women whom ornaments of pure gold adorn more than any other parures; and again, but only here and there, one with dark hair and gray or blue eyes, a Celtic type, perhaps, but found in our native stock occasionally; rarest of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel, brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook spoken of in this chapter, where it ran through shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... word of the text is a gloss. Nearly all the Latin MSS. of religious or practical treatises, that have come down to us from the Middle Ages, contain examples of such glosses, sometimes few, sometimes many. It may naturally be supposed that this glossing of MSS. began in Celtic and Teutonic, rather than in Romanic lands. In the latter, the old Latin was not yet so dead, nor the vulgar idioms that were growing out of it, as yet so distinct from it, as to render the glossing of the one by the other needful. The ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... the Gauls into Italy we have heard as follows. In the reign of Tarquinius Priscus at Rome, the supreme government of the Celts, who compose the third part of Gaul, was in the hands of the Biturigians: they gave a king to the Celtic nation. This was Ambigatus, one very much distinguished by his merit, and both his great prosperity in his own concerns and in those of the public; for under his administration Gaul was so fruitful and so well peopled, that so very ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... interest attaches because of its wide use in western Asia and among the Celtic peoples of Europe. This is the penannular (or open) ring. In Europe, it was usually of solid gold or silver, but in Japan, where these metals were very scarce in early days, copper, plated with beaten gold or silver, was the material generally employed. Sometimes ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... in the Celtic nature, some beast in the blood, which, when aroused, is exceedingly helpful in matters of this kind. In less than sixty seconds, I had demonstrated to the onlookers, and particularly to my opponent, that I had been to school since last meeting him. I had not been particular about fancy touches, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... desires. Color and music, sweetness and soft luxuries, declared these modern followers of Ambrose and Chrysostom, were the agencies of Satan in the undermining of morals. Pulpits thundered. The press sneered at the new Pied Piper of Hamelin, and poets sang of him. One Celtic bard named him "Master of the Still Stars ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... editor unobtrusively studied Banneker out of placid, inscrutable eyes, soft as a dove's, while he chatted at large about theaters, politics, the news of the day. Afterward the applicant met the Celtic assistant, Mr. Mallory, who broadly outlined for him the technique of the office. With no further preliminaries Banneker found himself employed at fifteen dollars a week, with Monday for his day off and directions to report on the first of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... flesh. The bright scarlet drops rose high and broke, and trickled in vivid stripes across her hand as she held it before his face. Her own was very white, but without a trace of pain. Something in the fierce action appealed strongly to the fiery Celtic nature of the man. His ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... pronounced "arick," as was natural enough in a lady of her nationality. This much of the message was speedily circulated through the town, and caused at least one curious person to journey to a great library in the city in quest of a Celtic dictionary. As for the recipient of the card, she met her old lover with a face made more than beautiful by the conflicting emotions which manifested themselves in it. The interview was short. Mr. Brown said he had ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Pearson that the youngsters die, leaving only a precedent and a brass behind them. But if every man had his obelisk, even where he lay, then no frontier line need be drawn, for a cordon of British graves would ever show how high the Anglo-Celtic tide had lapped. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fightin' Irishman with no regard for the Sabbath," returned Jim Hutch, sternly. Now Greeley had a fear of what the dour old Scotchman might tell upon him. It would not pay to lose his Celtic temper. ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... countries, what were called the Western Lands were his favourite haunt. England, where the Saxons were losing their old dash and daring, and settling down into a sluggish sensual race; Ireland, the flower of Celtic lands, in which a system of great age and undoubted civilization was then fast falling to pieces, afforded a tempting battlefield in the everlasting feuds between chief and chief; Scotland, where the power of the Picts was waning, while that ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... not always the case, for on several occasions I have heard, as at Chartres, a little wood called la gatine; and once at Hastings was surprised, on inquiring my way in the fields, to be directed to pass the gattin hard by; namely a small copse. The word is said to be Celtic, and may be derived either from geat, which means a plot of ground, or geas, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... late and sumptuous tea with eggs to it, cream and jam, and thin, fresh cakes touched with saffron, Garton descanted on the Celts. It was about the period of the Celtic awakening, and the discovery that there was Celtic blood about this family had excited one who believed that he was a Celt himself. Sprawling on a horse hair chair, with a hand-made cigarette dribbling from the corner of his curly lips, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an instrument well-loved in Old Bali. Soek Panjoebang had the delicate features and transparent skin of Sumatra, the supple long limbs of Arabia and in a pair of wide and golden eyes a heritage from somewhere in Celtic Europe. Murphy bought her a goblet of frozen shavings, each a different perfume, while he himself drank white rice-beer. Soek Panjoebang displayed an intense interest in the ways of Earth, and Murphy found it hard to guide the conversation. "Weelbrrr," she said. ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... frightened, she tried to explain that she was not the marrying kind. Then, brick-red and bull-necked, he tried to tell her in his groping Celtic way that he wanted children, that she meant a lot to him, that he was going to try to make her the happiest woman ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... to pale olive yields, As lowly Celtic nard to rose-buds bright, So, to my mind, Amyntas yields to you. But hold awhile, for to the ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... of the summer. While the Romans were in winter quarters on friendly ground the Tencteri and Usipetes, Celtic tribes, partly because forced out by the Suebi and partly because called upon by the Gauls, crossed the Rhine and invaded the country of the Treveri. Finding Caesar there they became afraid and sent to him ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... the coming day he looked supernatural—a strange spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth. This was borne in upon Patsy's consciousness, and it set her Celtic blood tingling and ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... and have missed being famous only from being eclipsed by the greater glory of Staffa. The island belonged for many generations to the Macquaires, a name distinguished in our home annals, as well as in those of Australia. The Celtic name of the Livingstones was M'Leay, which, according to Dr. Livingstone's own idea, means "son of the gray-headed," but according to another derivation, "son of the physician." It has been surmised that the name may have ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... end of the seventh century it was threatening the Byzantine Empire on one side of Europe, and the Gothic dominion in Spain on the other. On the other hand, in the same period, Latin Christianity had decisively taken possession of England, driving back that Celtic or Irish Christianity which had been beforehand with it in making entry to the North. Similarly, it was the Irish missionaries who began the conversion of the outer Teutonic barbarians; but the work was carried out by the Saxon Winfrid ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... as possible the more familiar "formulae" of folk-tale literature. To do this I had to withdraw from the English-speaking Pale both in Scotland and Ireland, and I laid down the rule to include only tales that have been taken down from Celtic peasants ignorant of English. ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... school of Florence rather than of that of Venice that he is kinsman, feeling that the close imitation of Nature is a disturbing element in imaginative art. The visible aspect of modern life disturbs him not; rather is it for him to render eternal all that is beautiful in Greek, Italian, and Celtic legend. To Morris we owe poetry whose perfect precision and clearness of word and vision has not been excelled in the literature of our country, and by the revival of the decorative arts he has given to our individualised romantic ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... advance of his main body; which he led out of their camp, and, getting them across the river at two spots, drew them up opposite the enemy. On his left wing, close to the river, he stationed the Iberian and Celtic horse opposite the Roman cavalry; and next to them half the Libyan heavy-armed foot; and next to them the Iberian and Celtic foot; next, the other half of the Libyans, and, on the right wing, the Numidian horse. Having now got them ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... who was only a boy, was a little frightened at first, but, not wishing to appear a child of absolute ignorance, he summoned what little learning he had, and began to blunder out something about the Celtic languages and literature, and asked the Lion who he conceived Finn-Ma-Coul to be? and whether he did not consider the "Ode to the Fox," by Red Rhys of Eryry, to be a masterpiece of pleasantry? Receiving ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... checkered light and color of the street. She was passionate, she was vain, she was wayward, she was fierce as a little velvet leopard, as a handsome, brilliant plumaged hawk; she had all the faults, as she had all the virtues, of the thorough Celtic race; and, for the moment, she had in instinct—fiery, ruthless, and full of hate—to draw the pistol out of her belt, and teach him with a shot, crash through heart or brain, that girls who were "unsexed" could keep enough of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... is that Brown had something of the Celtic spirit—the melancholy, the mystery of that sensitive and delicate temperament; but it is vitiated by what I can only call a schoolmaster's humour—cheap and silly, such as imposes on immature minds. When he was quite serious and simple, he wrote beautiful, quiet, wise letters, dealing ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... aspect is Narbonne, the Celtic Venice, as it rises above the level landscape. The great seaport described by Greek historians six centuries before our own era, the splendid capital of Narbonese Gaul, rival of the Roman Nmes and of the Greek Arles, is now as dull a provincial town as any throughout France. Invasions, sieges, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... George Borrow, Cornishman on the father's side and Huguenot on the mother's, managed to display in perfection most of the characteristics of what once was, and let us hope has not quite ceased to be, the English type. If he had a slight overdose of Celtic blood and Celtic peculiarity, it was more than made up by the readiness of literary expression which it gave him. He, if any one, bore an English heart, though, as there often has been in Englishmen, there was something perhaps more as well as something ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Thene, in the northern angle of the lake of Neufchatel, a great many articles of iron have been obtained, which in form and ornamentation are entirely different both from those of the bronze period and from those used by the Romans. Gaulish and Celtic coins have also been found there by MM. Schwab and Desor. They agree in character with remains, including many iron swords, which have been found at Tiefenau, near Berne, in ground supposed to have been a battle-field; and their date appears ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... Egyptian, Assyrian, Byzantine, Scandinavian, Celtic, Persian, Indian, Gothic, Chinese, and Japanese design. For intimate study of these various styles and periods the reader is referred to the various books listed ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... Celtic Antiquities of the Christian Period" I have given the history of Irish art in the Christian period; in "New Grange (Brugh na Boine) and other Incised Tumuli in Ireland, the influence of Crete and the AEgean in the extreme west of Europe in early times," I have ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey
... schools, the agriculture and the land, the farmer and the landlord, the poverty and the hospitality of the people, were all to be studied at first hand; and there were churches by the way at Swords and Rush which the archaeologist will seek in vain to match in any other country. The Bound Tower (Celtic no doubt) at the former place, and the battlemented fortalice, which is more like a castle than a church, at Rush, are both worth a ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... branching of its two chief stems when we turn to the other division of the Indo-Germanic languages. The Greco-Roman divided into the Thracian (Albano-Greek) and the Italo-Celtic. From the latter came the divergent branches of the Italic (Roman and Latin) in the south, and the Celtic in the north: from the latter have been developed all the British (ancient British, ancient Scotch, and Irish) and Gallic varieties. The ancient Aryan gave rise to the numerous ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... dignity. She would rise to the evil occasion, no hag, but a largely-offended sibyl, whom nothing thereafter should ever appease. To forgive was a virtue unknown to Mistress Conal. Its more than ordinary difficulty in forgiving is indeed a special fault of the Celtic character.—This must not however be confounded with a desire for revenge. The latter is by no means a specially Celtic characteristic. Resentment and vengeance are far from inseparable. The heart that surpasses in courtesy, except indeed that courtesy, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... brunette so richly tinted, that the glow of her cheek was only surpassed by the flashing brilliancy of her large, dark eyes, that seemed, in those glorious manifestations, to kindle with inspiration. Her forehead was eminently intellectual, and her general temperament—Celtic by the mother's side—was remarkable for those fascinating transitions of spirit which passed over her countenance like the gloom and sunshine of the early summer. Nothing could be more delightful, nor, at the same time, more dangerous, than to watch that countenance whilst ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... still too young to raise a voice in protest) was unmistakably Irish, or at least part Irish. It is also worthy of note that Mrs. Bumbleburg ran away with an Irish policeman some weeks after the infant Fritz's advent into the world, which would go to show that the mother, at any rate, had Celtic inclinations ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... like Chartres, sprang from an ancient Celtic hill fort, and, through successive stages, has since grown to a Roman, a mediaeval, and finally a modern city. It crowns the top of a very considerable eminence, the like of which, says Professor Freeman, does not exist in England. Like Chartres, too, it has always retained the balance ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... prepare to abandon them,—not always, however, let us hope, without turning, at the expense of the invaders, a Parthian penny in their flight. In my walk from Dublin to North Charlesbridge, I saw more than one token of the encroachment of the Celtic army, which had here and there invested a Yankee house with besieging shanties on every side, and thus given to its essential and otherwise quite hopeless ugliness a touch of the poetry that attends failing fortunes, and hallows decayed gentility of however poor a sort originally. ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... and Celtic (Scottish and Irish) immigrants during the late 9th and 10th centuries, Iceland boasts the world's oldest parliament, the Althing, established in 930. Independent for over 300 years, Iceland was subsequently ruled by Norway ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... weight, they are not so unwieldy as the majority of those forming Stonehenge, which is generally accepted as the work of an exceedingly early race of sun-worshipping men. The name "Torr" is possibly derived from the Celtic word "Tochar," a causeway, modified to "Toher" and then to "Torr." The lanes leading from Dulverton to the village of Hawkridge, about 1-1/2 miles from the steps, are exceedingly beautiful, and the whole course of the river ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... in this a thorough Celt. If, for one brief period, he forced himself, for personal reasons, to veil this feeling, the feeling remained rooted within him, and soon resumed its wonted expression. He liked the South, and the people of the South, and had a true Celtic sympathy with their aristocratic pretensions. The salary of an assistant editor at that time was something between the wages of a compositor and those of an office-boy. Seven dollars a week would have been considered rather liberal ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... incipient states, or inchoate nations, with an organization, individuality, and a centre of social life of their own. The families and tribes that migrate in search of new settlements carry with them their family and tribal organizations, and retain it for a long time. The Celtic tribes retained it in Gaul till broken up by the Roman conquest, under Caesar Augustus; in Ireland, till the middle of the seventeenth century; and in Scotland, till the middle of the eighteenth. It subsists still in the hordes of Tartary, the Arabs of ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... of these species separately, nor will it be necessary to do so, as the varieties which mark the different kinds of common bramble are such as would not be observed except by an accurate botanist. This tribe, which takes its name from the Celtic rub, which signifies red, and is supposed to be so named from the red tint of its young shoots, as well as from the colour of the juice of its berry, consists chiefly of shrub-like plants, with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... Perceval's Murder. Discrepancies of Evidence. Curious Story of Bude Kirk. Mr. Williams's Version. Dream of a Rattlesnake. Discrepancies. Dream of the Red Lamp. "Illusions Hypnagogiques." The Scar in the Moustache. Dream of the Future. The Coral Sprigs. Anglo-Saxon Indifference. A Celtic Dream. The Satin Slippers. Waking Dreams. The ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... may have had a Gallic or Celtic origin, and an analogy only with the Roman clientship. The German comitatus, which seems to have ultimately merged its existence in one or other of these developments, is of course to be carefully distinguished in its origin from them. The tie of the benefice or of commendation could be formed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... records begin, just before the beginning of the Christian era, one race, the Britons, was dominant, and into it had merged to all appearances all others. The Britons were a Celtic people related to the inhabitants of that part of the Continent of Europe which lies nearest to Britain. They were divided into a dozen or more separate tribes, each occupying a distinct part of the country. They lived ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... called Farsistan, north-east of what we now call Persia, the dwelling place of the Persians, there dwelt, in the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ, a hardy tribe, of the purest blood of Iran, a branch of the same race as the Celtic, Teutonic, Greek, and Hindoo, and speaking a tongue akin to theirs. They had wandered thither, said their legends, out of the far north-east, from off some lofty plateau of Central Asia, driven out by the increasing cold, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... King was held as great As German Emperor; and each knew how His evil part to play, nor mercy show. The German had one aim, it was to take All land he could, and it his own to make. The Pole already having Baltic shore, Seized Celtic ports, still needing more and more. On all the Northern Sea his crafts roused fear: Iceland beheld his demon navy near. Antwerp the German burnt; and Prussias twain Bowed to the yoke. The Polish King was fain ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... MacIan," answered the glover, for the simplicity of the Celtic language and manners rejects all honorary titles; "it was even too good for this fasting season, and much too good for me, since I must be ashamed to think how hard you ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... to separate the dear ones," said the wife; "wherever they are sent, let them go together. I could pledge my watch and wedding diamond ring to help to raise such beauties," said she, passionately. "Surely they cannot be Irish, or they must belong to some race different from the Celtic half savages which we ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... that race and language need not go together at all. What philologist, for instance, could ever discover, if he had no history to help him, but must rely wholly on the examination of modern French, that the bulk of the population of France is connected by way of blood with ancient Gauls who spoke Celtic, until the Roman conquest caused them to adopt a vulgar form of Latin in its place. The Celtic tongue, in its turn, had, doubtless not so very long before, ousted some earlier type of language, perhaps one allied to the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... an individuality that invites consideration from the ruck of commonplace men. Of mingled Irish, Scotch, and English blood, the first predominated, and the Celtic element in him was strong. A man of vigorous health, careless of gain, a wanderer, and by his own choice something of an outcast, he led to the end the existence of a rolling stone. He lived from hand to mouth, never quite growing up. It seemed, indeed, that he never could grow up in ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... be Irish on her mother's side and so was a ready-witted match for the doctor's Celtic exuberance; though to Wargrave watching it seemed that Burke's easy banter cloaked ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... soul! Celtic and improvident! Patrick's visions had shown him only the triumphant arrival of his host and the beatific joy of Eva as she floated by his side on the most "fancy" of boat-birds. Of the return journey he had taken no thought. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... early Greeks to all the people living West of their country, the Romans included under that name only the tribes occupying the countries now known as France, Western Switzerland, Germany west of the Rhine, Belgium, and the British Isles. Blocked together under a generic name, the Celtic nation was, however, composed of many tribes, with separate dialects and customs. It has been surmised that two of these tribes, the British and Irish, early took possession of England and Ireland, where ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Meanwhile, Perseus was not idle; he secured the attachment of his subjects by equitable and popular measures, and formed alliances not only with the Greeks and the Asiatic princes, but also with the Thracian, Illyrian, and Celtic tribes which surrounded his dominions. The Romans naturally viewed these proceedings with jealousy and suspicion; and at length, in 172, Perseus was formally accused before the Roman Senate by Eumenes, king of Pergamus, in person, of entertaining hostile designs against ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... representation of introversion with its danger and with regeneration was given previously [see Vishnu's adventure]. Detailed examples follow; first the Celtic myth of the birth ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... twenty men climbed on. Another was caught up by Mr. Lowe and the passengers transferred, with the exception of three men who had perished from the effects of immersion. The boat was allowed to drift away and was found more than a month later by the Celtic in just the same condition. It is interesting to note how long this boat had remained afloat after she was supposed to be no longer seaworthy. A curious coincidence arose from the fact that one of my brothers happened to be travelling ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... accordin'....'" Mrs. Tapping, whose system was always to turn the conversation to some incident in which she had been prominent, might have developed this one further, but Mrs. Riley interrupted her with Celtic naivete. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a burning shame of Prick!—'Prick' we call her, in our genial moments, hearing as the 'k' is hard in Celtic language; and all abroad about her husband. My very first saying to you was, not to be too much okkipied with her. Look at the pinafore on her! Lord be with me! If his lordship, as caught me, that day of this very same month fifty years, in ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of the cavern, concealing, in that fashion, both their labors and their flight. The arrival of the fox and the dogs had obliged them to remain concealed. The grotto extended the space of about a hundred toises, to that little slope dominating a creek. Formerly, a temple of the Celtic divinities, when Belle-Isle was still called Colonese, this grotto had seen more than one human sacrifice accomplished in its mysterious depths. The first entrance to the cavern was by a moderate descent, above which heaped-up rocks formed a low arcade; the interior, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... ever faithful in their friendship, till years of wrong and robbery, and want and insult, drove them to desperation and to war. They were barbarians, and their warfare was barbarous, but not more barbarous than the warfare of our Saxon, Celtic and Norman ancestors. They were ignorant and superstitious. Their condition closely resembled the condition of our British forefathers at the beginning of the Christian era. Macaulay says of Britain: "Her inhabitants, when first they became known to the Tyrian mariners, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... we celebrate is truly a great one. Since the time of OLAF, the Northman, our Anglo-Saxon-Celtic race has loved its jesting philosophers. No fools are they, in fact, even when to that name they 'stoop ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... more probable that Treport may have been termed by the Romans, Citerior Portus; though he candidly admits that he finds no mention of a place so called among their writers.[138] The modern name of the town he derives from the Celtic word, Treiz; or, as it is sometimes spelt, Traiz, Trais, or Treaz; a word still in use in Lower Brittany, to signify "the passage of an arm of the sea, or of ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... of Feanor, a table of letterforms resembling the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the "Book of Kells". Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien in "The Lord of The Rings" as an orthography for his fictional 'elvish' languages, this system (which is both visually and phonetically {elegant}) has ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... are quoted from Celtic and Teutonic folklore to the effect that birds and butterflies are human souls, and Caesar's remarks about the Druids may not ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... language contains a quantity of poetry, which, how difficult soever to transfuse into other tongues and idioms, never fails to touch the heart, and excite enthusiastic feelings. The plan of 'The Modern Scottish Minstrel' restricts us to a period less favourable to the inspirations of the Celtic muse than remoter times. If it is asked, What could be gained by recurring to a more distant period? or what this unlettered people have really to shew for their bardic pretensions? we answer, that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... much research and investigation might be employed. But there is no need why these researches should be extended to the region of fancy. Gargantua has been proved by some to be of Celtic origin. Very often he is a solar myth, and the statement that Rabelais only collected popular traditions and gave new life to ancient legends is said to be proved by the large number of megalithic ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... inhabited by the Galatai, then it means North Galatia, a district in {151} the extreme north of Asia Minor. It was mainly inhabited by Celts, who came thither from Europe in the 3rd century B.C., and spoke a Celtic language as late as the 2nd and even 4th century after Christ. This language is mentioned by Pausanias, and St. Jerome says that it was a dialect only slightly varying from that used in Gaul by the Treveri. But if the word "Galatia" is used in a political ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... are thy pristine glories, Finlagan? The voice of mirth has ceased to ring thy walls, Where Celtic lords and their fair ladies sang Their songs of joy in Great Macdonald's halls. And where true knights, the flower of chivalry, Oft met their chiefs in scenes of revelry— All, all are gone, and left thee to repose, Since a new race and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... expresses with the real world, and the power of his enthusiastic visions to win the loyalties and affections of men, many moralists and statesmen have, like Plato, regarded the creative artist with suspicion. They have half believed the lyric boast of the Celtic ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Celtic barbarians crossed the Apennines into Etruria and attacked CLUSIUM. Here a Celtic chief was slain by Roman ambassadors, who, contrary to the sacred character of their mission, were fighting in the ranks of the Etrurians. The Celts, in revenge, marched upon Rome. The disastrous ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... know whether William Baxter is authority for anything. When you see a word quoted from one of the languages or dialects which the moderns call Celtic, that word will very commonly be found not to exist. When at a loss, quote Celtic. If W. Baxter says (see No. 13. p. 195.) that buarth papan means the sun's ox-stall, or, in other words, that papan means ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... Laurent d'Olt that I braced myself up to the task of faring on foot by the river through the department of the Aveyron. Here in the upper country the stream retains its ancient name, the Olt, which is merely an abbreviation of Oltis, unless it be the Celtic origin of the Latin word. It is easy to see how in rapid speech L'Olt became changed to Lot. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... of the pasture field. The name of this piece of land gives the clue to its history. It is called Sandford; a corruption of Sarn Ford, from sarnu (pronounced "sarney") to pave; and fford, a road. These are Celtic Cornish and Welsh words; and it should be noted that the names of the Roman roads in the Island as well as those of the mountains and rivers, are nearly all Celtic, and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and Celtic societies persecute an Arabian race, from whom they have adopted laws of sublime benevolence, and in the pages of whose literature they have found perpetual delight, instruction, and consolation? That is a great ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Bart. (1833-1898), English painter and designer, was born on the 28th of August 1833 at Birmingham. His father was a Welsh descent, and the idealism of his nature and art has been attributed to this Celtic strain. An only son, he was educated at King Edward's school, Birmingham, and destined for the Church. He retained through life an interest in classical studies, but it was the mythology of the classics which fascinated him. He went into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... because you are not prone To bursts of eloquence or flights of feeling; You do not emulate the fretful tone Of those who turn from boastfulness to squealing; Your temperament, I am obliged to own, Is not expansive, Celtic, self-revealing; But some of us admire you none the less ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... be rid of the precision and order of everyday life drove them to the mountains, and to the literature of Wales and the Highlands, to Celtic, or pseudo-Celtic romance. To the fashion of the time mountains were still frowning and horrid steeps; in Gray's Journal of his tour in the Lakes, a new understanding and appreciation of nature is only struggling through; and ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... in quest of Manx Literature. Now the title alone of that book is worth a library of commonplace works, for it gives the world an inkling of a thing it never before dreamed of, namely, that the little Celtic Isle of Man has a vernacular literature. What a pity if the book itself should be eventually lost! Here some person will doubtless exclaim, 'Perhaps the title is all book, and there is no book behind it; what can Mr. Borrow know of Manx literature?' Stay, friend, stay! ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... would be as indisputable as that of those introduced by the English into the various countries of the East where they have factories; e.g. governor, council, company. But these and numerous other traces of the Celtic language which have been found in Florida and Darien are not indicative of such impressions; most of them, from their universality, bespeak themselves to be primitive; and who can assure us that ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... of his political statements, was that his English friends invariably spoke of him as "a typical Irishman." They looked upon him as so much comic relief to the more serious things of their own lives, and seemed constantly to expect him to perform some amusing antic, some innately Celtic act of comic folly. At such times, Mr. Quinn felt as if ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Byzantine State Church under Justinian 95. The Definitive Type of Religion in the East: Dionysius the Areopagite Chapter II. The Transition To The Middle Ages. The Foundation Of The Germanic National Churches 96. The Celtic Church in the British Isles 97. The Conversion of the Franks. The Establishment of Catholicism in the Germanic Kingdoms 98. The State Church in the Germanic Kingdoms 99. Gregory the Great and the Roman Church in the Second Half of the Sixth ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... considered that. She is rather of a Celtic than an Anglo-Saxon type; the cheekbones are prominent; the jaw is not massive; the head is broad—if I can remember I will measure it; the eyes are of a peculiar blue, resembling chicory flowers; the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mother was a Pennsylvanian. Her forebears had come to Pennsylvania with William Penn, some in the same ship with him; they were of the usual type of the immigration of that particular place and time. They included Welsh and English Quakers, an Irishman,—with a Celtic name, and apparently not a Quaker,—and peace-loving Germans, who were among the founders of Germantown, having been driven from their Rhineland homes when the armies of Louis the Fourteenth ravaged the Palatinate; ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... "there is the old reckless Celtic blood asserting itself again. Don't forget, my friend, that even L10,000 a year can be spent, and ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... at this announcement, but she smiled and hid her grief; or at least her grief, in the shape of a Celtic cook, was at that time not to be seen, being employed in the kitchen, where she had invited two of her friends to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Britain), is supposed to have been born about the middle of the fourth century. Nothing is now known regarding the place of his birth, or precise period when he was born. His name "is supposed to be a Greek rendering of (Pelagios, of or belonging to the sea) the Celtic appellative Morgan, or sea-born." He never entered holy orders. If tradition is to be trusted, he was educated in a monastery at Bangor, in Wales, of which he ultimately became abbot. In the end of the fourth century he went to Rome, having acquired ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... the glee maiden, her Southern tongue in vain attempting the Celtic accentuation. "I am told my poor plays will not be understood if I go nearer to yon dreadful ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... see any reason for wonder, Nora. He has been listening to me for three months, vaporing over the wrongs of Ireland; he's of Celtic blood; he has been an adventurer in California; he has the money, it would seem. Why, the wonder would be if he did not do what all the young ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, upon which Wagner has based his drama, is taken from many sources, the old Celtic legend of King Arthur, his knights, and the Holy Grail being mixed with the distinctively German legend of a knight who arrives in his boat drawn by a swan. The version used by Wagner is supposed to be told by Wolfram von Eschenbach, the Minnesinger, at one of the Wartburg contests, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... decided at Hampden Park on the 9th February, 1889, between the 3rd L.R.V. and Celtic, and ended in favour of the 3rd L.R.V. by two goals to one. The same clubs, however, had previously met to decide the contest, but both played under protest in consequence of the weather. This naturally ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... conspicuous part in politics and war; or even, as in the Age of Anne, to shine among wits and in society. Life has become, perhaps, too specialised for such multifarious activities. Indeed, even in ancient days, as a Celtic proverb and as the picture of life in the Homeric epics prove, the poet was already a man apart—not foremost among statesmen and rather backward among warriors. If we agree with a not unpopular opinion, the poet ought to be a kind ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... and is likely to have been a spontaneous growth arising from a natural human pleasure in similar sounds. "It lies deep in our human nature and satisfies an universal need." It is an established phenomenon in Sanskrit and Persian prosody, in Arabic, in Chinese, in Celtic, in Icelandic. Greek prosody, and Latin, which was based upon Greek, rejected it, partly perhaps because it was too simple an ornament for the highly cultivated Greek taste, especially on account of the great frequency of similar inflectional ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... remains of emotion in the frieze coats and gaudy shawls assembled for'ard: the wisest of the party were arranging their goods and chattels 'tween-decks, where they must encamp for a month or more; but the majority, with truly Celtic improvidence, will wait till they are turned down at nightfall, and have a general scramble ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Brythonic population may have survived. This northern portion of the kingdom of Northumbria was affected by the Danish invasions, but it remained an Anglian kingdom till its conquest, in the beginning of the eleventh century, by the Celtic king, Malcolm II. There is, thus, sufficient justification for Mr. Freeman's phrase, "the English of Lothian", if we interpret the term "Lothian" in the strict sense; but it remains to be explained how the inhabitants of the Scottish Lowlands, outside Lothian, can be included ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... to be one of the volumes sent to St. Augustine by Pope Gregory. However that may be, it is known as the Augustine Psalter, and the style of its ornamentation is of Roman origin. This ornamentation consists of initial letters in the Celtic manner; but gold, which was hardly ever used in the Lindisfarne school, and never in Irish MSS., is here seen in profusion, and this detail betrays a foreign influence. It belonged to the Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury, and may be a copy executed in that house of one ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... a very early period he had shown a decided inclination, having when in Ireland acquired the Irish language. At the age of twenty he knew little of the law, but was well versed in languages, being not only a good classical scholar but acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic dialects, and also with the peculiar language of the English Romany Chals or Gypsies. This speech, which, though broken and scanty, exhibits evident signs of high antiquity, he had picked up amongst the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the throne, the temper of Henry the Seventh seemed to promise the reign of a poetic dreamer rather than of a statesman. The spare form, the sallow face, the quick eye, lit now and then with a fire that told of his Celtic blood, the shy, solitary humour which was only broken by outbursts of pleasant converse or genial sarcasm, told of an inner concentration and enthusiasm; and to the last Henry's mind remained imaginative and ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... the ancients on the subject of the eternity of matter, Higgins, in his learned work on Celtic Druids, says: ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... small moss-grown cairn, probably the resting-place of some Celtic chief of other times, and the call of "Officers to the front," soon brought them ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Celtic and Latin with Teutonic, Slavic, North African, Indochinese, Basque minorities overseas departments: black, white, mulatto, East Indian, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... for I had had no news from that quarter since I left England. I heard that the Portuguese Jew had escaped—had vanished from his native heather when they went to get him. They had identified him as a German professor of Celtic languages, who had held a chair in a Welsh college—a dangerous fellow, for he was an upright, high-minded, raging fanatic. Against Gresson they had no evidence at all, but he was kept under strict observation. When I asked about his crossing to France, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... is hard to follow in detail, since datable evidence is scanty. In general, however, the instances of really native fashions or speech which are recorded from this or that province belong to the early Empire. To that age we can assign not only the Celtic, Iberian, and Punic inscriptions which we find occasionally in Gaul, Spain, and Africa, but also the use of the native titles like Vergobret or Suffete, and the retention of native personal names and of that class of Latin ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... 'Hem! The Celtic blood is all in commotion! This boy's business was to ask my candid opinion whether there were anything ungentlemanlike in a clerkship in a bank. It was well it was ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... marbles of youth, of springtide, and the desire of life. In 1900, at his special exhibition, Paris, Europe, and America awoke to these haunting visions. Not since Keats or Swinburne has love been sung so sweetly, so romantically, so fiercely. Though he disclaims understanding the Celtic spirit, one could say that there is Celtic magic, Celtic mystery in his work. He pierces to the core the frenzy and joy of love and translates them in beautiful symbols. Nature is for him the sole ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... and Germans, [Footnote: The Cimbri, who formed a portion of this invading body, had their original home in the modern peninsula of Jutland, whence came also early invaders of Britain, and they were probably a Celtic people.] had gathered a mass comprising, it is said, more than three hundred thousand men capable of fighting, besides hosts of women and children, and were marching with irresistible force towards the Roman domains. Nine years before (B.C. 113), ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... and decimal parts than 392,878,125. It follows, therefore, from calculating according to the specific gravity of stone of its kind, that it cannot weigh less than 30 tons 7 hundreds. The engraving is copied from "The Celtic Druids," by Godfrey Higgins, Esq. F.S.A. 4to, 1827, one of the most valuable antiquarian volumes it has ever been our good fortune to secure; and by the aid of an esteemed correspondent, we hope shortly to introduce a few of its curiosities more in detail than we are enabled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... communes of Varrains, Chac, St. Cyr-en-Bourg, and Brz. The whole of this district, by the way, abounds with interesting archological remains. While visiting the vineyards of Varrains and Chac we came upon a couple of dolmens—vestiges of the ancient Celtic population of the valley of the Loire singularly abundant hereabouts. Brz, the marquisate of which formerly belonged to Louis XVI.'s famous grand master of the ceremonies—immortalized by the rebuff he received from Mirabeau—boasts ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... are of the Celtic race, and are reported to have been compelled by their numbers to leave their country, which was insufficient to sustain them all, and to have gone in search of other homes. And being, many thousands of them, young men able to bear arms, and carrying with ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... strong wall. On the northern side this rampart can be followed for a considerable distance without a break. In one spot the soil which has collected about it has been dug away, leaving the masonry bare. It is not composed of loose stones of various sizes, like that of the Celtic city at Murcens, but of small flat stones neatly laid together, with layers of mortar between; a circumstance that sets one conjecturing and doubting. The wall appears to have been six or eight feet thick. The line ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker |
